The disclosed invention relates to ink jet printing systems that employ replaceable consumable parts including ink cartridges, and more particularly to pressurized ink delivery systems.
The art of ink jet printing is relatively well developed. Commercial products such as computer printers, graphics plotters, and facsimile machines have been implemented with ink jet technology for producing printed media. Generally, an ink jet image is formed pursuant to precise placement on a print medium of ink drops emitted by an ink drop generating device known as an ink jet printhead. Typically, an ink jet printhead is supported on a movable carriage that traverses over the surface of the print medium and is controlled to eject drops of ink at appropriate times pursuant to command of a microcomputer or other controller, wherein the timing of the application of the ink drops is intended to correspond to a pattern of pixels of the image being printed.
Some known printers utilize a pressurized ink source that provides pressurized ink to the printhead, for example in printers that make use of an ink container that is separately replaceable from the printhead and wherein pressurized ink reduces or eliminates the effects of dynamic pressure drops in the ink delivery path.
A consideration with known implementations of a pressurized ink source include the need for a constant pressure source or a continuous pressure source that maintains pressure above a minimum pressure, which tends to be expensive and complex and results in an inflexible ink delivery design.